Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday September 24, 2012 @04:57PM
from the to-the-stars dept.

RocketAcademy writes "The Romney-Ryan campaign has released a white paper on space policy, which observers find to be long on criticisms of the Obama Administration but short on specific recommendations. The policy promises 'a robust role for commercial space,' but it's clearly a supporting role: 'NASA will set the goals and lead the way in human space exploration.' When it comes to space, both parties put government ahead of private enterprise. Some see a parallel with the policies which are driving space companies out of California. Newt Gingrich, one of the few politicians who thinks seriously about space, says the policy is a step in the right direction but not enough."

There is a reason for that vague. From the own mouths they said, in the majority they do not get the votes of the educated elite. So, they with their second rate election team, spend the appropriate amount of time on creating illusionary policies. The amount of effort results in the simplest and vaguest nothings. Now if we were part of the more likely to vote for them crowd, then their corporate public relations teams would spend more time coming up with more accurate nothings to vote for them.

I agree, I feel like we should make a our goal creating a base on the moon from which to launch further expeditions to Mars, perhaps even construct the ships out there, so that we can make them larger, and more habitable.

It's all sci-fi sounding I agree, but It could be a step in the right direction... anything would be a step in the right direction.

I agree, I feel like we should make a our goal creating a base on the moon from which to launch further expeditions to Mars, perhaps even construct the ships out there, so that we can make them larger, and more habitable.

It's all sci-fi sounding I agree, but It could be a step in the right direction... anything would be a step in the right direction.

The latest step appears to be, "Let's watch and see what China and India do."

yeah... because since the 60s, all NASA has done is launch probes to all of the planets, orbiters to a bunch of them, rovers on Mars, interstellar probes at the boundary of the solar system, ion drives, missions to asteroids... gee I sure wish we were still trying to put a couple of guys into low earth orbit.

yeah... because since the 60s, all NASA has done is launch probes to all of the planets, orbiters to a bunch of them, rovers on Mars, interstellar probes at the boundary of the solar system, ion drives, missions to asteroids... gee I sure wish we were still trying to put a couple of guys into low earth orbit.

The James Webb Space Telescope (with it's awesome infra-red capabilities!) is a definite posibility of getting axed. Lots of other astronomy projects are threatened by the budget axe, too. Some great work being done from the ground, but there's getting to be a lot less support for keeping it going.

The James Webb Space Telescope is an abomination that is killing the exploration of the Solar System and beyond. Just as Constellation was killing manned spaceflight, the same could be said about the JWST. There have been some very well thought out science missions that are getting axed because of the cost overruns of the JWST and other projects including the commercial crew program are starving for fiscal oxygen as it were because that already incredibly late and hugely over budget project simply won't

I would disagree. If NASA budget went up 15%, the amount going to JWST would go up proportionally as well. That is how failing projects start to consume resources and "bad money drives out good money". This isn't a money issue, it is purely a management issue.

I wouldn't mind NASA's budget going up either, but there are other reasons for that to happen, and certainly demanding that what programs NASA is pursuing should be managed well and actually planned in some fashion with real engineering and a goal i

yeah... because since the 60s, all NASA has done is launch probes to all of the planets, orbiters to a bunch of them, rovers on Mars, interstellar probes at the boundary of the solar system, ion drives, missions to asteroids... gee I sure wish we were still trying to put a couple of guys into low earth orbit.

Because NASA GISS and JPL have done nothing in the last 40 years.

If it weren't for JPL, flying would still be as expensive as it was in the 60's.

You cant continually perform great feats with an ever shrinking budget.

No. South pole of the moon is a potential fuel base. Build the ships on earth, assemble in orbit, fuel from the moon. Skip mars mission and fetch the nearest earth crossing small to medium nickle-iron asteroid to L5. People only in LEO and maybe at the lunar fuel base. Everything else robotic.

Then build/invent orbital metal refinery with intention of blowing or sputtering onto foil a nickle iron barrel shape. Move that to LEO as new habitat. Also refuel and refurb asteroid tug and send it for the next as

You can't build rockets on the moon. There are no sources of refined metals, or plastics, or electronics. There are no machine shops, nor tool and die fabricators. There are no people to operate anything either. There are no launch facilities, no way to fuel the rocket, even if you managed to get it built.

I think you could say the same thing about the whole of the U.S. federal government. It was less than a hundred years ago (in the beginning of the 20th Century) that the Post Office Department was the largest federal agency.... not because the post office was necessarily all that huge but because the rest of the federal government was practically non-existent. That even including the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, which combined was still smaller than the Post Office.

America wasn't exactly a wimpy nation a hundred years ago either and had 48 states plus a dozen territories, including the Philippines and Cuba. That the whole "empire" could be managed with under a couple hundred thousand bureaucrats speaks volumes about what the federal government could be doing today.

Then again I blame Herbert Hoover for the mess that the federal government became, and FDR only made it worse.

No, I said I would like a 20th Century management that was able to manage an empire of about 200 million people at a time when communications was really not that different than it is today in terms of getting messages around.

State governments could certainly take care of nearly everything you are suggesting here as well, and what it needed to coordinate efforts between state governments can be facilitated with a very small bureaucracy that acts more as diplomats than overseers. Satellites can be provided by private businesses... and in fact mostly are anyway. Drug companies who put out a drug that kills people can be sued in court and held liable for their damages. It was a failure of courts to act which brought about the FDA.

Oh, and weather forecasts were done with that federal bureaucracy back so many years ago, as were universities. Of course the universities were also operated by state governments and still are. And they were a whole lot cheaper to attend before the federal government screwed them up with too much money.

So far you haven't given me a convincing argument, other than the fact that we have a standing army that seems to make a whole bunch of other countries pissed at us for having when we go off in misadventures all over the globe. The big government causes the problems we are facing that seems to be the justification for having the big government.

Yeah. $2.2 billion after you cut out the part Germany paid for. That's to send a giant robotic laboratory 350 million miles and land it on another planet.

We spend that much on one submarine. We have 71 of those. Last figure I saw for the f-22 program alone was $65 billion. That's just one plane we have zero use for and has spent a fair percentage of its operation life grounded. And still we spend between 1 and $1.4 trillion, per year, on defense related stuff.

That's (conservatively) more than one Curiosity rover launching, and one landing on another planet, every single day, all year long. Oh, and cash left over to launch a new space telescope maybe every other month? Plus the manpower to run it all. Now do that every year. Rough math, I admit.

So yes, $2.2 billion is roughly "$14 and a pack of chewing gum", with regard to the US Budget.

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”

All he's saying (Romney) is that they just need to stop buying the base model airplanes and get the ones with power windows - like in her Caddy.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Space Policy Paper has power space windows as a requirement, and heated leather. We all know that if the Challenger and Columbia shuttles would have had OnStar, there would have been no loss of life.

If I'm running for the most powerful office in the world, and giving a prepared speech the day after an event like that happened then yes, I would fully expect to give a coherent and cogent response. It's not like they interviewed him on the runway, standing next to a still smoking plane while his wife was gasping for fresh air.

"But in any case, he's right: there are a huge group of Americans who simply pay no income taxes and instead live off government support. They will support Obama regardless of what Romney says because they want to continue leeching off the rest of society."

So that's why the preponderance of people who don't pay income tax live in states that vote for Democrats! Obviously, right?

The problem with Romney isn't his intelligence or lack thereof, it's that he clearly ignorant (and either doesn't know or doesn't care that he's ignorant) of how the vast majority of the people who live in the country he wants to govern actually live. Obama may not be a very good President, and may have had certain advantages growing up, but he seems to at least have some clue as to how the average American lives.

I hadn't heard of that, do you have a link? Anyway, what would be wrong with an intercontinental railroad? We do a lot of business with Central and South America, why would a rail line extending from Alaska to the southernmost part of Chile not be a good idea, as long as the countries it runs through pay their share of it? We already have our parts run and it wouldn't cost us much at all.

Whoa so wait a minute... Romney's policy is almost identical to Obama's? What a shocker! Who could have predicted such a thing, when they are so.diametrically opposed on every other issue? Gee, that makes it so much harder to decide which tyrant to vote for.

yeah, because in this election, with the other trivial issues on the line like women's health, Medicare, dealing with Iran, the budget deficit, the economy, for sure I'm going to vote based on space policy.

When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no - and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous.

Clearly, Romney is an expert on these things, so I hope they take his input seriously in the design phase. We wouldn't want future astronauts dying from not being able to open their windows.

(yes, I know I'll be moderated down for this. but I've got karma to burn - even if I can't get oxygen at 30,000 feet to burn it with)

Oh wow, that's pretty stupid; but he was speaking from emotions. If your spouse was in peril, would you think about the technicalities first? He's done and said some really stupid things, but I have to give him a pass on this one.

You might feel the need to give him a pass, but I do not. He had time between the incident and when he gave that remark (at a $50k/plate dinner no less). Furthermore he is college educated and should realize the stupidity in that statement (actually there are layers of stupidity in it if you read it carefully).

His fratboy antics

You must be new here. On slashdot you are only allowed to call Obama (or BHO as is preferred) to be a frat boy or party animal. All republicans are serious, Obama is a party animal. Get the mantra straight before you talk politics here...

I think even if I was trying to cope with the thought of my wife dying in a space shuttle fire, I'd know that outside the space shuttle, there's pretty solid vacuum, and that I should take that into consideration. Or are you arguing that getting some very basic physics wrong when you're under pressure is ok? What if the pressure situation is the Chinese landing troops on the Diaoyu islands? Do you really want him to go "wow, that's bad, I'd better hit them with my space laser?"

Let's just say this: The people in Libya are in no way happy that these Americans were killed. Indeed, if you have been getting your news from anyone besides Fox news, you would know that the Libyan people are right now finding and taking care of the Islamic militants who did this terrorist attack.

Obama, instead of being a jackass and sending a bunch of US troops to Libya -- and, face it, that's what the idiots watching Fox news want -- saved the US taxpayers a lot of money by being

We can blame ether side all we want, but the truth is that without a perceived threat there isn't any political power to throw to NASA. If their was a known killer asteroid that was going to hit in 10 years we'd put every penny of the defense budget towards stopping it. If North Korea were building a lunar station we'd do everything to get one up first. But without the credible threat of something like what USSR presented we have no motivation other than just "to do it". I'm sorry but as much as we like to think we do things just because we can we do things a lot faster when you're in fear for your life.

Balderdash. It's well known that North Korea has probably the most extensive and sophisticated system of tunnels and underground bomb shelters in the world. If we based our policies on perceived threats, we never would have allowed a mine shaft gap!

1:Science and innovation important, some how having nasa means our workforce is some how more scientifically educated and skilled. Which makes no sense because I thought education did that, not Nasa.

2: Space is important some how to a bunch of industries, despite the only real importance being research and satellite launching.

3:Military in space good, need to secure space against space terrorists. More money to defense contractors. Could be hostile aliens?

4:Nasa and our space program is like fancy armor in WoW, it is the international penis we can wave in the face of non-space faring countries. People respect space penis. Also private space penis is good too.

Restate all the above and say that the country needs clear and concise leadership etc.

pretentious quote by me. Who quotes themselves in their own policies? I do. I'm that awesome

Huge diatribe on how Obama is bad and stuff. Also commercial space stuff is good

Really. Space-X has docked a test capsule to the ISS, and their first cargo delivery launches October 7th. Astronauts will follow on later flights.

NASA hasn't developed a successful new booster in 30 years, despite about three failed attempts. Space-X has a new booster that works. Arianespace has a new booster that works. NASA has old ICBM derivatives and a "Space Launch System" proposal.

Space-X has only 1800 employees. NASA still has 34,000. NASA does some good stuff, but it's far

Space-x hasn't designed anything new. They have just refined working technology. The tech Nasa tends to work with when designing a new launch system isn't. Just look at the Aerospike engine compared to the launch system that SpaceX uses.

Ya Nasa isn't perfect but they are hardly washed up and they are hardly useless. They face a declining budget each year and have to try find ways to make it streach and what projects should cover it. Any long reaching projects are also impossible because each administration

Quite aside from how it reflects on his opinions about colonizing space, that quote says some pretty bad things about Romney's management style if he's in earnest. Most of us have seen that sort of autocrat manager that can't even tolerate discussion of anything outside the box. They're pretty much universally idiots.

Newt Gingrich, one of the few politicians who thinks seriously about space...

I think the specific quote was "Mars, bitches!"

Or maybe it was "Mars...BITCHES!" indicating the former Speaker of the House and perennial presidential candidate thinks there are hot bitches on Mars who could be persuaded to do a little chubby chasing. After all, Calista isn't getting any younger, if you get my drift.

The article's editorializing isn't really fair. No, Romney doesn't have a plan, but the goal of the article isn't to propose a space policy, but to bash Obama's. And it's true that space exploration has taken a hit during the Obama administration, but all the key events took place before his administration.

Bush, 2004: "Screw that space shuttle, boys, we're going back to the moon!"NASA, 2004: "Cool! Just so you know, that's kind of expensive."Bush, 2006: "Is a buck fifty enough?"NASA, 2006: "No. And BTW, we're cancelling the shuttles like you asked."Obama, 2009: "Umm, guys? Let's be honest here, going to the moon on a buck fifty isn't going to happen. We need a new plan for what to do with your buck fifty."Congress, 2009: "What buck fifty?"Obama, 2011: "Oh for fuck's sake."

I've talked to lots of NASA employees over the year. Lots of them are really pissed off at Washington politics. But the names that inspire curses are George Bush and Congress. Obama is rarely mentioned.

NASA's woes are a classic case of the Republican game plan:1) When in power, make grand plans without sweating the details or the cost.2) When out of power, block all solutions to the problems that arise from your grand plans.3) When seeking power, blame the opposition for failing to solve the problems you caused.

Do you really think that parents that take their kids to the ER for a fever and/or ear infection are going to suddenly stop taking their kids to the ER and go to their regular doctor? Do you really think that the homeless, who account for a large percentage of ER costs, are going to find a doctor who will take them that doesn't work in an ER?

Mitt's plan is to let the States work this out for themselves. In some states that can be Robamacare and in others it can be insurance and tort reform. Tort refor

Do you really think that parents that take their kids to the ER for a fever and/or ear infection are going to suddenly stop taking their kids to the ER and go to their regular doctor?

Well yeah, they'll have insurance. These people aren't hopeless morons, and they love their children and what whats best for them. Indigent homeless are trickier, but you see a lot of working homeless families lining up around the block to get their non-emergent medical needs addressed. Under a

In some states that can be Robamacare and in others it can be insurance and tort reform. Tort reform would save the system more money then any of the current proposals.

You forgot to call the President "hopey changey," or make a reference to the "democrat party." Minus two points.

Tort reform is a bit of a red herring. Orrin Hatch's Tort Reform proposals in '09 would have saved about $54 billion [washingtonpost.com], which isn't chump change, but it would only reduce total national health spending by 0.5%. So we could claim that money on the table, but the limitations in Hatch's proposal specifically were extremely low, to the extent that they reduced pain and suffering awards to a slap on the wrist and would probably cause incidents of malpractice to increase.

State-by-state solutions are doomed in the US because of regulatory arbitrage. Employers and tax units in states with expensive programs can simply move their paper addresses to states with lower tax liability. Insurance companies can shop around for states that offer them the most favorable regulation (the ones with the least customer protections), and employers can play states off each other to obtain favorable tax treatment. States simply can't design their own programs when the employers within it can simply evade the costs of the system by filing paperwork, while enjoying all the benefits of the system by dumping their employees into the state public program. A state-by-state healthcare system in the US would end up looking a lot like the consumer credit card system in the US, which is to say, we'd all have whatever rights the North Dakota and Delaware legislature had agreed to, because they were the highest bidder for the health insurance company's business.

"States' Rights" has been keeping 60's-style state capitalism alive for decades, by giving employers a huge stick with which they can extract free services from a state government, guised under the threat of "killing jobs." An employer simply threatens to move unless they can stay tax-free, dumping the costs of roads, schools, police, and health care on everyone else.

If they left the state that'd be fine with everyone, the problem is corporations staying in the state, using the public services, the roads, the police and fire department, the courts, and sending their employees to the Medi-Cal office, all the while claiming that they don't have to pay for any of it because they happen to rent a mailbox in Reno, Nevada.

It's even worse in some states, where the threat of a multi-national employer moving out-of-state has convinced legislatures that they have to extend open-e

But if the law allows people to dump all of their costs in state A, and keep all their profits in state B, it's impossible to tell what policies "work."

The problem is the size of these companies and being beholden to them. If you had a thousand companies employing nearly the same number of people that the one mega multinational company was employing, I would argue that there would be much more economic productivity in that same part of the country, more general tax revenue, and arguably less ability to engage in those kind of accounting shell games because those companies in state A would not have any office in state B to play those kind of games in the f

What's that old saying? "I didn't protest when they left the liberal state. I didn't protest when they left the moderate state. Now they are leaving the country and leaving all the burdens on citizens. "

Maybe not a faithful quote but you might get the gist of it.

Corporations don't care about your values. They only care about the bottom line. That's how it is set up and probably how it should be. OTOH it's our job to hold them accountable. Part of that social contract is to make them contribute back to the community they have benefited from. The infrastructure, the subsidies, etc.

Laws and regulations enforce that contract. Without them corporations are bound to screw us over by their own rules.

The flip side is feast and famine. When the predator over hunts a territory he either moves on and fights his way into a new one or dies of starvation.

Civilization is supposed to moderate that cycle for us smart humans. Part of civilization is rules and regulation. Really that's all it is. Agreed upon self regulation to avoid feast and famine.

You see one of these stories every few months. [cbsnews.com] Behold, these people are homeless and seek out non-emergent care for their children. Wouldn't you rather these people be paying for this through insurance premiums, rather than having to rely on charity? No other country in the developed world has this.

Tort reform would save the system more money then any of the current proposals.

That, unfortunately, is unlikely to be true.http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751009

No matter how you 'reform' the system there will remain some liability.

Do you really think that parents that take their kids to the ER for a fever and/or ear infection are going to suddenly stop taking their kids to the ER and go to their regular doctor?

You never stop it completely. But after they've waiting 5 hours in an ER once, versus getting an appointment the next day with their family physician the problem isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. This has the downside of inflating ER wait times considerably in Canada and the UK for example, but most sane parents get the message.

I didn't know Paul Ryan was a Democrat. Sorry when he spoke at the Republican national convention, I thought he was a Republican. I mistook him for the same Senator Paul Ryan that criticized the President for not ramming the budget through Congress, the same budget that Republicans like Paul Ryan actively tried to defeat. There must be like six Paul Ryans in Congress these days.

You just have to rob a bank to steal the money to pay for your health care. If you get away, you can now afford it. And if you get caught, no worries, the government will now pay for all of your health care, food, and lodgings anyway.

Bottom line, if you don't get health insurance yourself, we are collectively robbing taxpayers are paying for it (one way or another). Who do you think picks up the insurance when someone robs money from a bank? We do. Witness TARP.

Actually the FDIC takes money from banks to be a member. It is an actual insurance.
Now, as for the police looking for the criminals... yes... yes it is our tax money.
But I guess I would rather pay taxes for cops, firefighters, teachers, medical care than to have people dieing on the streets because someone broke into a house and lit it on fire because they dont know that inflammable means flammable.
I must be a bleeding heart liberal... or someone who can critically think how things affect our society.

You clearly don't understand what TARP was. IMO it may go down in history as one of the better ideas the government has had. Why? In the end it was about purchasing preferred stock in those banks. Most banks have already repaid/bought back that loan/investment. And, for example, the Treasury has already made a $12B profit (that's about 30% return) on Citibank. Smaller profit on some others. There are 3-4 who have not fully paid it back, but shit, even AIG has committed to paying it all back, with a

At least they are still alive, and not lying face down in a gutter. And of course those inadequate facilities are probably still costing taxpayers about 10x what providing basic insurance would...

Always amazing the stupid decisions people (politicians and voters) will make with emotion or spite over reason. Reminds me of the CA death penalty. 13 people have been executed since it was reinstated in 1978, at a cost of about $4B. And the process takes so long that over *80* death row inmates have died of other causes. So $200M a year has been wasted just to wait around for 90% of the inmates to die on their own, same as in life without parole.

Thread drift is a hallowed part of/. history. From the time I joined after lurking for a while, thread drift has become a major feature of this atmosphere. To ensure you like it, next time you get mod points, use the Offtopic mod.

Most geeks have at least a touch of ADD. The original topic, which talked about a Space Program by the opposition candidates, was made after one of them wondered, in all seriousness, why you couldn't open windows on airliners. Any semblance of subsequent sanity is purely accidental.

Anywhoodlidoodle, don't worry sir(or ma'am), you need not fear paying for check-ups, immunizations, and whatnot. You can simply wait and pay tons more for what could have been easily preventable emergency care. Just like Rand would have wanted.

Actually, ol' Ayn would have preferred they die in the street, assuming it's not a street she frequents.

Someone rich enough who doesn't want their view sullied or the the local owner of that strip of road in front of his house/business who paid to have it built in front. S/he is responsible for cleaning it off of his property, or keeping the unkempt masses off of his/her properly so they don't die there.

That, or the body just sits there and rots/is eaten by scavengers. Pure 'personal responsibility' also allows for the problem to simply not be solved and piles of bodies can just lie around. Because that wo

But she didn't really demonize the bikes/benefits, she demonized the theft/taxes that paid for them. And yes, she benefited from the system, but she was also forced to pay into it, much like the guy who benefits from the bike was forced to give up the car.

Again, I have no sympathy for Rand, but you can't force people into a system and then call them hypocrites because they want to recoup their losses.

I'm from Massachusetts. He fucked us. He's fucks anyone he can. It's what he does. He's a fucker. First he's over there fucking those people. Then he's here fucking us. Soon he could be everywhere fucking everyone. He's not pro-healthcare. He's pro-big-business-fucking-innocent-people.

One would give states jurisdiction over a woman's uterus, and the other favors a profit motive for imprisoning people. That's no choice I want to have to make. The Libertarian party is as much of a sham as the two leading parties.

One would give states jurisdiction over a woman's uterus, and the other favors a profit motive for imprisoning people. That's no choice I want to have to make. The Libertarian party is as much of a sham as the two leading parties.

They are if there's a tax penalty in it levied under the FBAR Amnesty program [cafetax.com] because his Swiss bank threatened to report his numbered account to the IRS.

That program is for two people: those who are completely ignorant of the tax code because they just immigrated into the US and were told too late what to do with offshore accounts, and those who tried to hide capital gains from the IRS. The first one doesn't apply the Romney, and the second ought to really make you question why Romney is running.

They are if there's a tax penalty in it levied under the FBAR Amnesty program [cafetax.com] because his Swiss bank threatened to report his numbered account to the IRS.

That program is for two people: those who are completely ignorant of the tax code because they just immigrated into the US and were told too late what to do with offshore accounts, and those who tried to hide capital gains from the IRS. The first one doesn't apply the Romney, and the second ought to really make you question why Romney is running.

Maybe he's running so when elected he can get that annoying bit of tax code repealed. It might be very popular with the 1%.

Then again, once Romney announces he's going to repeal the Patriot Act, fix the TSA and abolish the DHS, and prohibit all warrantless wiretapping and illegal imprisonment of US citizens, I'll consider his own right to privacy worth defending...

If you give all of NASA's budget to them, they'll still be poor. Still poor, but their kids will have one less reason to stay in school. It's really hard to buy people up from poverty, but you can teach their kids up from it.